Be here now in the present moment: Aware, open and interested in what you are experiencing right now.

Acceptance: Opening up to thoughts and feelings to allowing them to come and go without blocking or holding onto them.

Defusing from unhelpful thoughts, emotions and memories. While it is important to acknowledge repetitive patterns, ACT encourages you to get a healthy distance from them so that you can choose to behave in ways despite the unhelpful thoughts, emotions and memories.

The observing self (self as context): Being aware of the part of you that watches you. This is consciousness and it is a part of you which is steady and stable. It is separate to your thoughts, feelings and memories. This self is experienced in the moment, watches thoughts come and go, and it can help you detach from unhelpful repetitive patterns. This is sometimes known as ‘pure awareness’.

ACT highlights six points to help you overcome difficulties:

Psychological Flexibility. Be present, open up, do what matters

Acceptance. Open up

Be here now. Contact with the present moment

Values. Know what matters

Defusion. Watch repetitive patterns objectively

The observing self. Self as context

Committed Action. Do what it takes to live values

Fees:

£290 / £250 early bird (book by 1st September 2015).

Cost includes workbook and MP3/CD guided meditations.

£120 per hour if booked as one-to-one or as a pair.

Book:

You can book or register your interest for the next scheduled coursehere.

Next group course:

TBA

Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT)

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT, pronounced as the word rather than the initials) is a more active take on mindfulness. ACT puts a strong focus on acting on your values. ACT sees meditation as just one way of learning mindfulness skills. ACT best suits clients that are interested in mindfulness but who struggle with meditation for whatever reason.

ACT WELL

HAPPINESS

ABOUT THE COURSE

A person might also become attached to negative self-beliefs such as: “I am not loveable if I do not achieve career success”. Avoiding or attaching to certain thoughts, feelings or experiences habitually leads to the person becoming stuck and struggling to live their life meaningfully.

In the quote on happiness below, the founder of ACT very eloquently describes how avoiding pain and clinging to highs actually generates unhappiness.

FURTHER INFORMATION

ACT can help clients cope with a range of difficulties. If you are interested in evidence-based therapies, you will be pleased to know that ACT has been well researched for effectiveness in stress, anxiety, trauma, depression, substance misuse, chronic pain, eating disorders and self-harm.

ACT theory says that psychological suffering is usually caused by avoiding experience and believing your negative thoughts. Avoiding unpleasant thoughts, feelings and sensations might help in the short-term but often avoidant coping strategies break down eventually.

ACT IN PRACTICE

ACT EXPLAINED

"There is a tremendous irony in happiness. It comes from a root word meaning 'by chance' or 'an occurence', which in a positive sense connotes a sense of newness, wonder, and appreciation of chance occurrences. The irony is that people not only seek it, they try to hold on to it - especially to avoid any sense of 'unhappiness'. Unfortunatly, these very control efforts can become heavy, planned, closed, rigid, and fixed.

Happiness is not just a matter of feeling good. If it were, drug abusers would be the happiest people on the planet. Indeed, feeling good can be a very unhappy pursuit. It is not by accident that drug users call their methods of doing so a 'fix' - because they are chemically trying to hold something in place. Like a butterfly pinned to a table, however, happiness dies unless it is held lightly."

Steven C. Hayes, PhD.

Originator of ACT.

Committed action: Setting goals from values and putting them into action by living your values every day. This helps you be the person you want to be, despite emotional and physical pain.

Values: Discovering what is most important to you. This is beyond what others want you to be and finding what gives you purpose and meaning in your life.

In exploring and developing these six processes over the 6-week programme, you find that you have more psychological flexibility. This means a 'bounciness' to spring back blows you may experience professionally or personally.